Private Schools

Sources

Popularity. Private schools, also called venture, adventure, or evening schools, first appeared about 1660 in New Netherland and by the beginning of the eighteenth century were found in most cities and towns in America. Colonial private schools were organized by individual schoolteachers who thought they could make a living or at least supplement their incomes by teaching adults and older children in the evenings or at times convenient to the student. The terms were usually short, perhaps six or seven weeks, and the fees were low enough to attract a sufficient number of students to make the teacher’s effort worthwhile. In the seventeenth century these schools helped to satisfy the educational needs of apprentices, whose contracts often contained an education clause allowing them to take courses during times when they were not working for their masters. Between 1698 and 1727 at least one hundred apprentice contracts in New York City mentioned evening school education. By the beginning of the Revolution private schools were well attended by all types of individuals who could afford the fees.

Schoolteachers. The quality of the private school depended on the ability of the teacher. Since anyone could open a school by taking out an advertisement in the newspaper and since no regulatory agency or board of trustees controlled quality, some teachers were underqualified or self-serving. However, most had at least adequate credentials for the courses they offered—if not college degrees, then apprenticeship training or business experience. Many were schoolteachers in more formal secondary schools and colleges; for example, at least seven private teachers in Philadelphia also taught at the Academy and College of Philadelphia. Others had occupations such as surveying and bookbinding and by experience were qualified to teach these subjects. Some even wrote their own textbooks. The outside teaching added something to their meager incomes, and they were sometimes able to make a little more by selling school supplies to their students: slates, books, quills, ink powder, compasses, and stationery. Most teachers were men, but some women taught as well, especially wives who assisted or supplemented their husbands’ courses.

Advertisements. Schoolmasters and mistresses attracted students by advertising in newspapers. About four hundred advertisements for private schools appeared in the South-Carolina Gazette between 1732 and 1775 and at least thirty-two in the Boston Gazette and Country Journal in the decade before the Revolution. Advertisements included information on the qualifications of the teacher, entrance fees for boys and girls, courses offered, times, and locations. Classes were offered most often at night or when people would not otherwise be busy, especially during the winter months. Fees varied according to the subject, demand, and gender of the student but probably did not exceed a shilling a week. Schools were located wherever schoolteachers could find an inexpensive place to hold classes, most often in their own residences, but rooms in taverns, other town buildings, and schoolhouses were also used. Occasionally teachers mentioned that they were willing to go to students’ homes.

Curriculum. Seventeenth-century evening schools provided the basics of education—reading, writing, and arithmetic. During and after the first quarter of the eighteenth century the curricula changed, with more emphasis placed on courses geared toward commerce and business. By the middle of the eighteenth century, as commerce and merchandizing expanded, private schools increased to meet the demands of the public for practical subjects in addition to academic ones. Accounting and bookkeeping, particularly Italian bookkeeping, were popular choices. Among the long list of vocational subjects found in advertisements were business, navigation, surveying, leveling, mechanics, architecture, gunnery, drafting, construction, masonry, and weaving. More advanced academic subjects supplemented the classical curricula, with courses such as midwifery, offered by Dr. Shippen of Philadelphia in 1765. But curricular offerings were not limited to academic and vocational subjects. A third category was that of leisure education—dancing, singing, fencing, painting, and drawing.

Significance. In responding to the particular needs of local communities, private venture schools provided the public with the practical education or skills that primary and secondary schools did not. They were more ephemeral in nature than formally established schools, and the instructors were of mixed quality, but for those who did not generally receive more than elementary level schooling, especially females and apprentices, private schools enabled them to achieve a higher level of education.

Sources

Lawrence Cremin, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607-1783 (New York: Harper & Row, 1970);

Richard Beale Davis, Intellectual Life in the Colonial South, 1585-1763 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1978);

Malcolm S. Knowles, A History of the Adult Education Movement in the United States (Huntington, N.Y.: R. E. Krieger, 1977);

Huey B. Long, Continuing Education of Adults in Colonial America (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Publications in Continuing Education, 1976);

Robert Middlekauff, Ancients and Axioms: Secondary Education in Eighteenth-Century New England (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1963);

Harold W. Stubblefield and Patrick Keane, Adult Education in the American Experience (San Francisco, Cal.: Jossey-Bass, 1994);

Thomas Woody, A History of Women’s Education in the United States (New York & Lancaster, Pa.: Science Press, 1929).